Facebook launches camera app; Instagram to be unaffected

Facebook has launched its fourth individual iPhone app, and this time it's a camera, the company announced Thursday.

Facebook Camera is an app intended to enhance the Facebook photo experience on smartphones, a company spokeswoman said.

The app will allow Facebook users to view a feed that focuses solely on pictures. It will also allow them to upload multiple photos at the same time as well as edit the pictures with captions and filters.

"When you launch the app, you'll see a feed of just great photos from the people you care about," the company said on its site. "You can swipe to see more of any album or tap to enlarge an individual photo"

The app is supposed join Apple's App Store later Thursday and will be available for free.

"Facebook Camera is about giving people a better Facebook photos experience on their mobile device," a Facebook spokeswoman said in an email. "This app not only gives people the ability to view photos of their friends but also makes it much easier to share photos on the go."

Facebook Camera comes shortly after the release of another Facebook app called Pages Manager.

The new camera app also comes out about a month after the social network company purchased Instagram, the popular social network site that is also focused on photos.

But with that acquisition not yet closed, the new app was not developed by Instagram's team. And avid Instagram users need not worry as the company is saying the new app will not mean the end of Instagram.

"While our acquisition of Instagram has not yet closed, [Facebook CEO]Mark [Zuckerberg] stated publicly that we're committed to building and growing Instagram independently," the spokeswoman said.

The release of this fourth Facebook app could also be a signal of how Facebook intends to begin monetizing the mobile market; by flooding it with apps.

[Updated, 11:31 a.m. May 24: Some readers said this app was launched on Android in April, but Facebook has clarified that is not the case.

In an update issued last month for its official Facebook app, the social network added a shortcut button to the app's camera feature along with a shortcut to its message feature. It added two shortcuts, but not actual apps.

Both of those shortcuts were then removed in the following update issued for Android.

The Facebook Camera app that will launch today for iOS is a full-blown standalone app, and a Facebook spokeswoman added that the company is looking into whether it will add this app to Android in the future as well.]